On the Road
by chartreuseputty
Summary: A collection of short one-shots featuring a different Naruto character and an OC, written in 2nd person. The stories have a theme that connects them throughout.
1. Roadside Blues

Roadside Blues

The air was cold enough this autumn morning that you carried a heat lamp out to your fruit stall by the road past the edge of Konoha. It didn't pay much to be a ninja and those did what they would in order to keep their head above water. You set the lamp in the cold ground and aimed it on the small cartons of fruit, then settled in your jackets and scarves and gloves and puffed song into the air, watching it swirl up, up, into the sky, and then disappear.

People came by. Some stopped to chat, little bought anything. The fruit was getting old, bruised from carrying it day by day, out and back to your stall by the road. You bit into a wrinkly apple and sighed.

"We do what we will," you said. "It's all that we can."

You heard footsteps in the dirt and you smiled, recognizing that slow, shuffling, gait and leaned back in your chair and closed your eyes.

The footsteps stopped in front of the stall.

"Hey there, stranger," you said, opening one eye.

Shikamaru's ears were tinged with red, his lips pink-purple, and his hands dug deep into his pockets. He looked tired.

Recently the Hokage had taken to sending Shika as a kind of ambassador to other villages and towns. A negotiator of peace, or a required visit to ensure that peace would be maintained. These missions weren't difficult, but they were many and long, and now that the winter was approaching they were dropping towards deathly cold as well.

"How come you're always here whatever I come and go? Don't you get sent on missions?"

You stood from your chair and guided Shika by the arm into it, and you turned your heat lamp so it glowed red on his face. He sighed.

"If I went on too many missions," you said. "Then who would give you fruit, and talk, and heat on your way back from a mission in the cold, Shika-kun?"

He looked up at your happy face. "Ch," he replied. "Most troublesome of them all."

While he warmed his aching hands and feet under the heat lamp you searched through the apples until you found a crisp, undamaged, Macintosh hiding near the bottom. You rubbed it on your shirtsleeve and handed it to Shika.

He bit into it with a snap, and looked it over in his hand as he chewed.

"I don't have any money with me," he said.

"It's on the house," you replied.

You thought you heard another traveler approaching, so you turned and looked down the dirt road and found it empty. When you turned back towards Shika he was looking up at you, with a rare smile on his face. You smiled back and stole the apple from his hand and took a bite, and giggled as Shika feigned annoyance.

"I should go," he said after your laughter trailed off.

He stood and approached you by the front of the stall. You looked at one another in silence, listening to the trees blow and the gravel crackle along the road. Shika took your chin in his hand and stepped forward, planted a small, cold kiss on your lips.

"That's your payment for the apple," he said, smiling, and snatched it from your hand.

He started off down the road and you watched him. He turned. "You'll be here next time?" he called.

"I will!" you called back, and waved until he disappeared.


	2. Crossroads

Crossroads

It is of the utmost importance that those traveling on the road pay close attention when arriving at a crossroads. Those you meet and those you leave behind at these junctions are without a doubt the people you are either destined to meet over and over no matter where you go, or destined to never see again no matter where you go to look. You remembered this traveler's warning as you approached a small junction of two forest pathways which came together briefly before separating off again to go their separate ways.

You trod the ground beneath the forest, silent with life, tapping at the ground with your walking stick, and tightened the shoulder straps of your pack. As you reached the junction you heard footsteps from the other path and you stopped, and waited.

Neji passed by into the joined pathway without a glance in your direction. You let him walk a little ways before you followed, and watched his figure blur and become one with the road and its surrounding forest.

The conjoined road stretched on for miles. You didn't see Neji again until night had fallen and you came upon his campfire blazing in a knoll by the side of the road. You looked at his eyes from across the way and read that he had been waiting. Obeying his silent beckon, you next to him by the fire and stretched out your aching leg, the one that had started to wear from your endless missions along the road. Neji reached across the fire's flickering and placed your leg in his lap, kneaded it with his palms and fingers.

"I've been watching you since this morning," he said.

You winced as he pressed into the angry muscle. "I know," you replied.

You both fell asleep by the fire, curled up in downy sleeping bags, halting all thoughts of travel and journey and allowing dreams of Konoha and family and houses rooted in the earth to penetrate the mind.

The joined road remained together for two more days and two more nights, and you walked together in silence while the sun was high, sat together in the dark while Neji caressed your weary leg. On that last night Neji kept his silvery eyes trained on you for as long as you both could stay awake, his hands left their place on your leg and moved through your hair and softly down your face until stopping to rest on the space between your collarbone and neck. You understood his attempt to remember everything so he could see you again in his mind when you both were once again alone along the empty forest roads.

The next morning you reached the split and paused, each with a foot on the joined and the splitting pathways. Neji reached into his pocket and brought out a single violet flower and placed it in your hand.

"You know what they say about crossroads," you said, too loud for the tranquility around you.

The last time you had seen Neji was when he left Konoha for a mission and you were standing under the gate, unable to tell him that you were there and would be waiting until you met again.

Neji smiled and all the fear of the parting dissipated. He said that he knew the saying too, and that it was inevitable that you would meet again, over and over, no matter which ways you chose to travel.


	3. To Go

To Go

You knew immediately when he was present in the village. No matter when or where you were you stood from your chair, or your bed, or stopped on your walk through town and you heard his silent yet blaring call: Here I am, come and find me. And you followed his invisible trail of dirt from the road and sand from home that led to some average doorway down an average Konoha street, and when the door opened, he was never surprised to see that you found him.

"Hello Gaara-kun," you said from the doorframe.

He did not smile, yet the gentleness behind his eyes was enough to say that he was happy to see you too.

You closed the door behind you when you walked inside and sat on the floor, behind the low table, and watched Gaara sort through papers. You befriended him one time when you were assigned to be his escort in the village, and over those seven days he embedded himself into your mind in such a way that now whenever he returned you could always, always find him. You dared not let a minute pass that you were not near him. You never knew the next time he would come, and the waiting grew unbearably painful when the time was too long.

Gaara placed a kettle on the stove and brought over two cups of tea. He placed yours on the table and sat next to you on the floor. You picked up the cup and blew.

"I leave tomorrow afternoon," he said.

You started and spilled a drop of the scalding water on your knee.

"You can't!" you said. "It's been too long."

Gaara looked into his cup, no expression, and swirled of the tea round and round belying his unease. You placed your hand on his arm, and repeated your words. But he shook his head and removed your hand from his arm and placed the palm on his cheek.

You wished then you could take back what you said. It was impossible for Gaara to stay. He was a talented nin, busy, sought for anything and everything the village needed and therefore cast out onto the road more times anyone would want. And you feared the road. You feared the loneliness, what you might miss from back home, and that you would pass by other travelers not realizing who they were. It was better to stay home and wait.

Gaara gently touched the place where the tea had burned and soothed it with cool fingertips. Acts of extreme gentleness were still new to him, he had to learn now what everyone had been studying since they were born.

"Because I leave so soon," he said. "You have to stay here with me tonight."

He leaned forward and balanced with a hand on your knee, eyes searching eye, then stopped. SWhen Gaara left after that first meeting you knew that you wanted to be the one to teach him everything. You leaned the rest of the way to him to show that you would stay.

You hid within the streets of Konoha the next day, unable to bear watching him slowly disappear along the road. You wandered and wandered until you realized that the road was not one to release its hold. And so, at dusk you arrived under the gate in the with a bag on your back. There is only one option for those who are in tangled with transients, and that is to challenge the road, and so you left the certainty of Konoha's walls and chased after Gaara.


	4. Hayride

Hayride

Sleep was a thing you took as you could when you were on the road. You slept when it was cold, raining, snowing, or even when you hitched a ride within stacks of hay being carted by donkey from town to town. It was scratchy, the ride was bumpy, and you had a monstrously fat tabby cat for a bedmate. Yet you fell asleep as soon as you hit the hay (so to speak) and lay dreamless on your free ride along the road.

It was late morning when you woke and offered to sing songs with the old farmer driving the cart. You taught him songs you knew from the Academy about heroes and warriors who fought for the village, and he taught you old songs he would sing with his children while working in the fields. You told him that every ninja longs to be home, yet things happen while out on the road that can stay with you forever.

You stopped singing when a friend of the farmer's approached from the opposite direction and both halted their carts to chat. You stood and stretched out your arms and attempted to pet the tabby cat who sluggishly swiped at your hand. As you settled down on a stack, you saw from down from the way you came that a person on foot was approaching, and as he neared you recognized the red paint on his face and you leapt to your feet.

"Hoy, Kiba-kun!" you called and waved your hat.

Akamaru howled and bounded ahead and you leapt off the cart just in time before he barreled you over and licked all over your face.

"Hey now," you said giggling. "Kiba will be jealous."

Akamaru let you up and ran circles around Kiba when he stopped before you and rested a hand on his hip.

"Oh, I see you missed me so much you followed me all the way out here," he said, with a grin on his face.

"I got here first don't you know," you retorted and punched him lightly on the arm.

Both of you had been sent on long and lonely missions to distant villages, to travel miles down the road with nothing but a bag on your back. Kiba had left before you. He was called away one afternoon while you both were walking Akamaru by the Academy. As he turned to go you told him that sometimes when you stay in one place for too long things begin to stagnate; things that should be done are not, and things that should be said are not. But then again, sometimes the road could stretch on ahead for miles with no end, and those same things then simply disappear. Kiba had wanted to tell you something that afternoon but never got the chance.

Akamaru had smelled the cat and was now slowly chasing it around the cart, since the cat was too fat to move very fast.

"How much longer until you come home?" he asked.

You shook your head. "Miles and miles."

The farmer had finished talking and was heading back toward the cart. Kiba saw him and his smile disappeared, and a look of hurry and worry spread across his face.

"When you come back…" he began.

"Tell me now," you said, cutting him off.

You pondered each other's faces; yours red from the sun and the scratchy hay, his dirty from the dust on the road. He reached for your hand and pulled you into an embrace.

"I'll tell you when were home again," he whispered in your ear. "So make sure you come back soon."

The cart kicked up dust as it moved off and away down the road, and you stared back until your eyes began to blur, until Kiba turned a corner onto another road leading to another town, and another road beyond that.


	5. Two if by Sea

Two if by Sea

The first time you said goodbye, promises were made to meet again, as always happens when transients meet along the road. You made a day, and a place, and a time, and for all the distance in-between there was only wonder and worry if the other would honor this fragile promise. The meeting was approaching, yet the river was long, and all you could do wait for the watery road to bring you to your temporary destination.

Your small fishing village sat on an island out in sea. The water was like family, not a soul had ever been swept away into the open or sunk into the deep. You lay for hours in your small canoe and always you would awake on the shores of a known and safe haven, or floating through tepid river water as you were at this very moment. You held the present for your fellow traveler cupped in the palm of your hand, and you closed your eyes and trusted the waters to carry you safely to him.

You felt the boat come to a halt under you, and opened your eyes to darkness and starlight. You sat up and looked down into the water, then out to where you had come and where you would be going when the morning came. You lit the two candles in your pack and placed them in your swinging lanterns, and up on the banks he emerged from the forest carrying a single light to show the way.

You left the boat and ran up the shores to meet Lee and you hugged and laughed and sat together in the grassy banks with the lanterns in between.

"I did not think we would arrive at the same time," he said from behind the light. "Was it a coincidence?"

"I don't believe in those," you replied.

You asked him to tell you about his village, Konoha, about the land and the trees and the animals on them, and in turn you told him about your own island in the sea. This spot by the river was the midway point. It was the place Lee found your canoe bobbing in the shallow waters, and you lying in it so deep in sleep that he mistook you for dead. When you opened your eyes and looked up at him he had started to cry. You sat up, patted this stranger's hair to quiet him, and knew that the river also did not believe in coincidences.

You handed the gift to Lee and he pulled out a small wood carving of a sailboat. He looked up and was sad.

"I did not think to bring you a gift," he said.

You looked at his hands, his strange clothes, his gentle face and the growing frown as though the sky were falling on him. He clenched his fist and blew out his nostrils and you burst into laughter, and without thinking leaned over the burning candles and kissed him on the cheek.

When you returned you covered your mouth and were grateful that the night masked the red on your cheeks. Lee watched you through the light.

"I know!" he said and leapt to his feet. "Your present…" he knelt down beside you in the grass. "…is this," and he took you in his arms and kissed you long until you fell into the grass and stayed until the sun rose in the morning.

You stood with one foot on land and the other in the canoe as Lee clutched at your hand.

"The rest of your present is another promise," he said. "I promise to visit your village, I promise to bring you a girt, and I promise to stay."

"How long?" you asked,

"For however long," he answered.

You pushed away and set off along river-way.


	6. Café de Voyageur

Café de Voyageur

Up high within the chilly mountain pass there was a small restaurant named Café de Voyageur that served both those traveling north towards the endless rolling plains, and south into the hot sandy desert. In either direction there was nothing for miles. Without this traveler's café those from the plains would fall dry and limp from the heat before they reached the high gates of Suna, and those from the desert would lose their way and wander in hunger before they came upon the first village in the Fire Country. It did not save all those who braved the distance, but it did what it could.

You drew up a stool to one of the wooden tables and placed your wet socks on the radiator at the base of the wall. A waiter clacked over the wooden floors and brought you a steaming cup of tea.

"To chase away the cold and the fear," he said.

You thought about your journey, how far you had come and how much farther you yet had to go. The café was filled with thoughts of the never-ending road. You flipped your socks over and warmed your hands on the teacup with a lingering coldness in your heart, one bred out of that loneliness that comes while journeying across the world. The only thing that kept you going on was the promise of meeting someone at the other end.

"Ame-chan?"

You looked up to the one who said your name and the cold was leached from your heart and you stood, bumping the table with your knees.

"Kankurou!" you said, and leapt into his arms though they were still swamped with cold from the mountain and he hugged you and ran icy hands through your hair.

The waiter brought over an another cup of tea and added a small steaming pot to the table. You watched Kankurou removed his hat and gloves and pack, and unzip the front of his jacket. He leaned forward and placed his elbows on the table and when he saw that you weren't smiling he frowned.

"What's wrong, Ame?" he asked.

"Are you going or coming?" you said.

He did not understand your question, so you asked again. He was the one that you hoped to meet on the other end, the one to break your lonely trek through fire and ice and back again.

"I'm coming," he replied. "Coming home to meet you."

You placed your head in your now warm hands and your pounding heart would not calm.

Kanurou reached across the table and pulled at your hand, then laid it on the table, and covered it with his own. The paint on his face was smudged from the winds that blew with fury through the small mountain pass, his smiled was chapped, lips accustomed to the hot and dry but not the cold.

The waiter brought food to the table but he did not let go.

"Kanurou-kun, we can't eat with just one hand," you said, laughing.

He let go and pouted, and you ate and rested and talked for hours until it was time to leave. And you bundled up and walked out into the darkening air together.

Many people claim that it's best to travel alone, to collect your thoughts and to find those answers you've always been searching for. However, sometimes the road can stretch too far for any mortal to cross alone, and that is when it's better to go together.


	7. Lost and Found

Lost and Found

It was far into the night when you knelt down to the ground and hugged your knees. You were lost.

The road wasn't always a safe pathway from one place to the next. Sometimes it liked to play tricks, to lead you the wrong way, to promise and end yet give only more roads to travel. And sometimes it led you stray until it disappeared completely, leaving nothing but a mossy forest floor and the sound of crickets as your only company.

Your nose was assaulted by wood, both alive and dead, that lived in the forest for longer than a hundred human lifetimes.

_This isn't how it's supposed to end, _you thought. _I have somewhere to go._

You trembled in the dark as the forest closed in around you. Yet when it readied to clamp shut you felt a hand on your shoulder instead, and saw, floating in the dark, a pair of red eyes.

"Sasuke-kun!" you said, and his name echoed through the woods.

He lifted you from the ground and carried you in his arms through the black until the trees thinned and you emerged into a small circle of bare grass and the road lay lit by the moon farther up ahead. Sasuke placed you on the ground and studied your face, your eyes sunk deeply in the weak light.

"Baka," he said. "I told you not to come looking for me."

You smiled though he couldn't see. This was the third time you came looking for him since he disappeared from Konoha many years ago. It was a silly game of lost and found. You would become lost by looking for him, and instead he would find you. The lost finding the lost.

It was a silly game.

"Just come back. Then I won't have to look for you."

There were very few people in Konoha who could possibly have the power to sway Sasuke to return to the village. You were one of them. Naruto was away and Sakura was training, which meant, for now, the search was on your shoulders.

Sasuke shifted and you clutched at the hem of his shirt.

"At least stay here until morning," you said.

He nodded and you laid your head in his lap and he placed an arm around your shoulder. You fell asleep peaceful in his arms, knowing that when you woke in the morning he would already be gone.

All through the night he watched you as you slept, he struggled and believed for moment that he really should return, for your sake, yet when the sun on your eyelids brought you back to life you found yourself lying alone in the grass.

You packed your things and stepped out into the road.

"Maybe it's time to go home," you said, and started on your way back.


	8. Loop de Loop

Loop de loop

If ever you find that the road you're traveling becomes stuck in a loop, it most likely means that there is something you should be doing along this loop that you haven't done. One would think that these loops are easily resolved, but it's usually the kind of people who need to be told or reminded to do things more than a few times who become stuck.

There was no thought of loops on your mind as your correspondence mission took you from north, to west, to south, to east and around again and again and again. The only thought you had was that your path was nearing Konoha and a little river by the road where a one of its nin went to train every day, and who waited for your arrival and the end of each month.

When finally you saw him peering down the pathway ahead you broke into a run, and met him panting, yet with a grin on your face.

"How goes it, Naruto-kun?" you asked.

"No time for standing around," he scolded. "You have a schedule to keep remember?"

He escorted you down the pathway with an arm round your shoulders. The first time you met on this mission was a pleasant surprise, the second a miracle, the third something to laugh at, and now it was an unbreakable routine along this never-ending loop de loop.

You walked down the road, breaking the silence with clomping feet and heavy laughter, which faded along with each step closer to the fork in the where you would head north and Naruto would turn back. Each time you came around the bend this walked seemed to get shorter, and the time between them longer.

You arrived at the split and stopped.

"I hate this," Naruto said. "For some reason, when you go off down that pathway I feel as sad as though I just had one of the worst days of my life."

"Naruto," you said. "What if this goes on forever?"

You peered up at him from under his arm and he down to you. He thought for a moment.

"Then one day I'd carry you off and bring you back to Konoha."

If you had been talking in the earlier part of your walk together you both would have been laughing, but since it was the end there was nothing that could be said that either would think absurd. There's only truth within moments before long goodbyes.

"What if they try to make me go back?" you asked.

Naruto lifted his arm and moved you around to face him.

"I'd just tell them no," he replied.

The two of you smiled, the first one at the parting since many months ago. And you walked backwards and waved to him until you couldn't see him anymore, and you yelled. "I'll be back," though you were sure he couldn't hear.

And as you walked down the road you felt like something had changed, and sure enough at the next destination you were informed that this would be your last round in the loop de loop, and you raced through it, finally with an end in sight.


	9. To Return

To Return

Though the road may seem as though it could stretch on for eternity, eventually, one way or another, it will always lead you home, and home was where you were heading. And sometimes when you finally reach that home that hung like hope above your head for all your long journey, it doesn't welcome you. This is what you were thinking when you arrived at Konoha's gate one gray rainy morning. All you saw in the grey light was a reminder of just how long you had been away.

You couldn't bring yourself to step inside. You feared seeing a place you didn't recognize, faces you didn't know, and to find everyone you cared for had forgotten who you were. That is the traveler's greatest fear. You were standing weary in front of the gate when figure appeared in the rain, holding a yellow umbrella.

"You're back," Shino said.

He met you on the other side of the gate and held the umbrella over your head, allowing the rain to wet his hair and cast watery veins down his glasses. He held out his arm and you took, and then allowed him to lead you away from Konoha's gate and along the wall.

"Where are we going?" you asked.

"To your welcome home present," he replied.

You looked up at him, his face tinted yellow from the umbrella, and thought that even if he were the only one left who knew you, that Konoha could still be your home.

You arrived at a patch of forest within the Aburame property. The bushes and canopy sprayed you with engorged water droplets and you pushed through until Shino pulled back branches to reveal a small lake.

He removed his jacket and set it on the ground, then sat and pulled you down after him.

"The rain will stop soon," he said.

As if my magic the rain began to taper off and a ray of sunlight penetrated through the sky and lit up the lake waters. The dragonflies and water bugs and butterflies that had been hiding emerged from their rest and filled the little forest lake. You watched it, and Shino watched you, and the life promised that it would always be there no matter how long you left it for the road.

"I've been waiting a long time," Shino said.

"I'm sorry," you said, and stared into his uncovered eyes.

He wiped away a droplet of water that had crawled from your hair and down your forehead.

"Can you come home now?" he asked.

You nodded yes and leaned against him as he wrapped and arm around you and continued to watch the lake ahead.


End file.
